Knight in Armour
by NCIS Fan28
Summary: "Girls and women need to stop searching for him - whoever the 'knight in shining armour' is - stop searching for the fairytale ending. He and it don't exist - they'll never find it. Instead of convincing themselves that there is one they should just accept what's in front of them." An argument leads to a conversations of another sort. Established Tiva. ONESHOT.


**Hi everyone, sorry for my few month absence. I haven't had a lot of motivation to write up until the beginning of August - then I had a writing competition thing through this month.. Then I got a bit behind in that, then my iPod decided it wanted to delete what I had written about 10 times then once when I was coping it to another app, then school got in the way so I stopped and now I'm here. This is actually the first thing I have finished writing in a while. **

**I am working on the chapters for my other stories, and have about half of them for a few of the next chapter written.**

**Oh, and I also have tumblr which I will get around to posting my writing (both fanfiction and eventually original) on there. My name url is _aaliyahlee28. tumblr. com_ (no spaces) if you want to follow me :).**

**Anyway, I'm not too sure about it this - maybe a little OOC; but it's something. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own NCIS or its characters.**

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Ziva slowed to a walk as she turned the corner to the road where her apartment was, the slight breeze was icy against her flushed and sweaty skin from her run. She needed to burn the anger and frustration from her system before she could peacefully sleep without her mind wandering to the one person that she wished to forget for a while. She knew that was impossible when she saw his car pulled up a few parking spaces from hers. She knew he'd be waiting, wanting to talk about it.

She fished her keys from her pockets as she walked through the lobby and up the stairs to her floor. She could hear the knocks of knuckles on the wooden door before she saw him. She stood behind him at a safe distance - a distance which she knew her presence would remained unknown to him. She heard him sigh before simply resting his hand on her door, pausing for a moment before he decided to talk.

"You clearly don't want to talk to me, and that's fine; but I want to talk to you. And if you're not going to open the door; then I'll have this conversation from this side," he said, "you're car's out front; I'm not that blind. I know you're in there."

"I am not in there, Tony, and you're right; I don't want to talk to you," she stated coolly.

"That's fine, you don't need to talk. I'll do the talking," he said as he turned around and watched her. There was no hostility in his eyes, there were no accusations. It was just a shame that his eyes didn't hold that look earlier that day.

She all but ignored him as she continued to walk to her door, pushing the key into the key hole and turning it until it clicked. But she didn't open it; she placed her back against it and turned to face him.

"Why are you here?" she asked.

"I thought I owed you an apology," he simply stated.

"You _shouldn't_ need to owe me an apology," she hissed.

"I know," he replied; looking down and avoiding her eyes, "can we talk about this inside?"

She remained silent, she turned and twisted the door knob, walking in and leaving the door open for him. As much as she didn't want him there, the conversation was one that the neighbours didn't need to hear.

"I'm sorry, Ziva," he said, the sincerity in his voice contrasted heavily against her hostile stance in the middle of the room.

"Why should I accept your apology? I told you I had done nothing wrong and yet you continued to accuse and doubt me," she stated.

"It was looking pretty grim for you for quite a while," he said calmly.

"We have been together, for what? Six months, and partners for a lot longer. I understand the director and that person's family doubting me; but never in a million years did I think I would be trying to prove myself to you; you of all people," she said, her voice was less tamed than Tony's as she spoke. He could hear disappointment and almost betrayal in her voice.

"You had even _told_ me that you believed me, but somewhere between that and when I was told I could leave something changed," she added

He swore that he wouldn't ever be one of those men to hurt her yet, this time his actions spoke louder than his words. She was right; somewhere in the mix of things, he had lost grip on what she had said; what was told to him from a second source contradicted what she had told him. His heart and gut wanted to listen to her - told him that she'd never kill in cold blood - but his mind told him that she was a suspect and he had to listen to the evidence like any other time - like any other suspect.

She claimed someone - a man - had tried to attack her, she was left unscathed - which was unsurprising given her past - and the man was dead. There were no witnesses and he had no weapon even though Ziva had assured everyone that he did.

"You had lost your trust in me," she said, "you needed the evidence for you to tell me that you would never doubt me. Your words to me said one thing, but everything you did and everything you said to everyone else said something different."

"You're right, I did need the evidence. It's my job to look at what the evidence said and made my judgement on that - just like you're meant to. The evidence said that you killed him-"

"I told you that!" Ziva exclaimed, losing the calm mask she wore, "I used my phone call while in custody to ring you and tell you I had killed him. I told you he had a weapon - forgive me if I was too busy trying to stop him from injuring me to notice that he had dropped the weapon and it landed however far from me it did. While metro was investigating and informing us of where the case was; Gibbs was there, not you, and that is what hurts the most - the fact that you weren't there to support me. I wouldn't have cared if I got charged with his murder as long as Gibbs, McGee, Abby, Ducky, Palmer and _you_ knew that I had not done it in cold blood-"

"Stop. Just stop for a moment," Tony finally raised his voice, silencing her, "I was getting everything second-hand - and you were in custody; you'd given yourself up - I was told not to involve myself; so I didn't, Gibbs orders. I was asking the director if he had heard anything - all he told me was that you had killed someone, not you killed someone because they were trying to attack you. I'm sorry that I wasn't there. I should have taken your word. I'm sorry I once again let Gibbs save you. I'm sorry that I wasn't your knight in shining armour."

Her eyes softened slightly, she unfolded her arms from her chest and finally moved from her space in the middle of the room to sit on her lounge - pulling at the hair tie until her hair fell around her face, she ran her hand through her hair and closed her eyes, trying to calm herself. After a moment, she felt the lounge dip slightly and his leg brush against hers as he sat beside her.

He watched her for a moment as he chose his next words carefully.

"I'm not prefect," he simply stated causing her to open her eyes and look towards him.

"As much as I say I am; I'm not," he continued.

"Nobody is perfect; but everyone is perfect in their own way," Ziva stated, her voice softening also.

He spared Ziva a quick glance and half a smirk before he looked away again and continued."

I make mistakes - like I did today, I know I am and should trust you with anything and trust anything you say- I'm also no knight," he stated, "girls and women need to stop searching for him - whoever the 'knight in shining armour' is - stop searching for the fairytale ending. He and it don't exist - they'll never find it. Instead of convincing themselves that there is one they should just accept what's in front of them," Tony said his voice soft but he didn't look at Ziva.

A silence consumed them, out of the corner of his eye he saw Ziva look away from him. Afraid that he had said something else that'd get her worked up again he looked towards her. But the only thing written across her face was thought. The silence lasted a little longer.

"I disagree," Ziva began.

"Disagree with what?" he asked.

"Disagree that women should stop looking for a knight in shining armour or their fairytale endings," she stated.

"Why?"

"Because everyone has their own perception of a fairytale ending and every man is a knight in shining armour in his own way. It just takes the right princess to see it," she said, "but even then; knights in shining armour make mistakes, they are not infallible."

"Has this princess found her knight in armour then?" he asked.

"You'll never know," she stated, smirking at him, "but I am still mad at you," she added.

"I know. I don't expect you to forgive that quickly. After all; you're no naïve princess," he said.

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**Thanks for reading :)**


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